Four on the floor

That's how the day ended, both of us on our knees, laughing and kissing, our minds swimming with dreams and possibilities and finalities.

That event I mentioned the other day? It was our engagement, though I had no idea it was coming - a fact we both laugh and revel in together - even though my mom had assured him that, "of course she knows it's coming."

So much so that when Elisabeth was dispatched during a girls' night out to find out ring specs, I insisted on quieting the topic, knowing that it just wasn't in the cards right now. When she pressed over and over, I didn't move and as I was leaving her house that night, she yelled after me, "You're going to marry him!" I dismissed her with a flip of the wrist and walked on.

You see, we'd only been dating three months and, while we - unbeknownst to each other - both would have jumped in head first even at the two-week or month point, that's just not how things are done, right?

Further, my sweet, ambitious boyfriend was in the first stage of a 33-month graduate program in another state and was only three months away from beginning stage two: a year abroad.

When I was asked if I was going to marry him by another friend, Angie, I skipped the usual response: a categorical rejection and unparalleled disbelief at the suggestion. Instead the response was a bit more demure, and out came "I don't know what will happen, but if Jacob Hardy asked me to marry him, I'd be the luckiest girl in the world."

So, after only three months of dating, one year ago today, my head spinning, heart floating, I listened as the most wonderful man in the entire world looked up at me from on knee and offered me a hand, a ring, a new future. And I accepted.